Voting is now closed for the Best Technology Blog, but there is a potential vote rigging controversy afoot. The site currently states:"RESULTS ARE NOT FINAL FOR THIS POLL! This poll is still being checked for excessive voting from individual machines. If excess voting is found it will be noted and the votes will be removed. The winner should be announced Monday."Top gadget blogs Engadget and Gizmodo dominated the voting - and both are neck and neck, with 44.7% and 44.2% of the votes respectively. [let's not mention where R/WW ended up!]. Both of the big gadget blogs heavily promoted the contest to their readers. During the week I noticed Engadget take an early lead - and up till a couple of days ago when I last checked, Engadget held a reasonable lead over Gizmodo. But both sites have gotten a lot of fast votes over the past few days.Perhaps taking their fierce rivalrya bit too far? Note that users were allowed to cast 1 vote every 24 hours, which was determined by IP address. But most web techies know how easy it is to manipulate ip address voting. So we'll see how the "excessive voting" investigation goes!p.s. I wonder if this will be covered by Valleywag? ;-)Top image courtesy of CNNMoney.com (linked above)
There are a lot of ways to send large files online. One my favorites is Senduitfrom Davidville (the Tumblr guys), which I wrote aboutin April. I like its simplicity and how easy it is to use. Unfortunately, Senduit, which is built on the back of Amazon's Simple Storage Service, has a 100mb file limit and though speedy on the download, requires that the file first be fully uploaded before downloading can begin.PipeBytesis a new service that cuts out the middle man. The service has no file size limits and lets recipients begin downloading before the file is finished uploading -- in fact, that file doesn't begin to upload until someone starts downloading on the other end. While files are being transferred, a YouTube video plays in the browser window to keep you occupied, and an animated status indicator shows you the progress of your transfer.I was able to successfully send an 80mb MP3 file to Marshall Kirkpatrick via the service. Though we were both shown different videos, they seems uncannily matched content-wise to the file I was sending -- which was a DJ mix, and I was shown a video of a turntable routine. I'm not sure if PipeBytes read the file note I left, which mentioned what type of music the MP3 was, and tried to match up a like video or if it was a coincidence (I think I'd lean toward the latter).It's not clear how PipeBytes works, but my guess is that the site is establishes a direct connection between the uploader and downloader. There are a few reasons I think this: 1. Your file doesn't start uploading until someone is downloading, 2. It can only send to one person at a time, 3. Their FAQ says files "are sent directly to your peer."If that's the case, PipeBytes should be spending virtually nothing on bandwidth. Though it does raise some questions about the usefulness of the service. If all it is doing is establishing a direct connection, what is the advantage over doing the same thing via instant messenger, Skype, or IRC (DCC Send)? The advantage of file sending sites like Senduit is that they allow the downloader to get quicker speeds on their end as a result of getting the files through a faster pipe. Also, they are asynchronous, so uploader and downloader don't have to be online at the same time. When both of those advantages are removed, why not just use IM?
The team over at Live.com Translationhave released a very simple toolthat allows anyone to put a drop-down translation menu on their website. Here's a live example, entered with one line of javascript. Give it a click and you can read Read/WriteWeb in a variety of other languages.When users click on the prompt to translate the page into their language of choice, they are taken to a Live.com page where the original and translated pages are displayed side by side.I think this is pretty awesome and I added it to my personal site right away. Thanks to LiveSidefor the link, it's always the best source for in-depth and breaking coverage of the Live.com world.
The much hyped web drama "Quarterlife," which is set to debut on MySpace on November 12, may be making the jump to television as a result of the Hollywood writers guild strike. According to a report from The Hollywood Reporter, the Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick-backed web show is rumored to be in talks with NBC to be used as strike-contingency programming.Zwick and Herskovitz, the creative team behind the cult hit TV show "My So-Called Life" and the Oscar-nominated film "Blood Diamond," make up one of the more high profile teams to try their hand at a web-only production. They would follow the successful runof Michael Eisner's "Prom Queen" earlier this year.According to The Hollywood Reporter, "Quaterlife" could appear on NBC as early as February. The show, which was initially developed for ABC three years ago, will go on with its Monday MySpace debut as planned, a spokesperson for Zwick and Herskovitz told the paper. However, Herskovitz has gone on record as saying that their MySpace contract only covers the first four hours of the show and the team would like to explore other distribution channels.This would, of course, not be the first time NBC has looked to the web for talent for its television network. The network's late-night staple Saturday Night Live famously hired Andy Sambergafter viewing some of his popular web video shorts.
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/offbeat_news/When_Patrick_Met_Camille_New_York_Romance_Unfolds_Online';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'compact';Sunday night, Patrick Moberg, a 21-year-old web designer from Brooklyn, was riding the number 5 train from Union Square in Manhattan when he spotted the girl of his dreams. With rosy cheeks, a flower in her hair, and writing in a journal, it was love at first sight. And, in a stroke of good luck, the girl got off the train at his stop. But, sadly, Moberg lost her in the crowd.The determined web designer went home and immediately put up a web site dedicated to finding what he thought could be the love of his life: NYGirlOfMyDreams.com. The site included sketches of the girl and himself, and information about which train he saw her on. On the web site Moberg posted his cell phone number and email address and within hours he had an influx of messages.According to the New York Post, Moberg was even offered love by callers. "Some people said I'm not the girl but you're so adorable, pick me instead," he told the paper. By Tuesday night, he updated the web site to proclaim that he had made a positive match through a friend of the mystery girl's who had come across the site and to remove his contact information. The girl is Camille Hayton, from Melbourne, Australia who also lives in Brooklyn and interns at BlackBook magazine."This is crazy. I can't believe it's happening," the 22-year-old Hayton told the Post. So what happens next? You'll have to use your imagination. Moberg isn't planning to update the site anymore, and won't return any emails or phone calls requesting interviews."Unlike all the romantic comedies and bad pop songs, you'll have to make up your own ending for this," says a message on NYGirlOfMyDreams.com.
There's content news all around this morning. Microsoft just announced the launch of a new blog for its forthcoming Office Live Workspace Community, Glenn Close has launched a blog of her own to support the dog products ecommerce site her family has invested in and the classic tech podcast Gillmor Gang has been sighted on Facebook.Live Workspace BlogLast month we covered some early screenshotsof Microsoft's soon-to-launch online collaboration suite, Live Workspace. It's built on top of the desktop Office tools and in competition with Google Docs. It looks very nice and today the company launched a new blogto do all the things a company blog can do for a product. Two questions. Why is the video on the site posted in one of Google's YouTube video players? Second, where's the Google Docs community blog?Glenn Close is a...Actress Glenn Close is blogging at a new dog site called Fetchdog. It's a nicely designed site, aimed at a tiny part (high end, eco products) of a big niche market - dogs. Dogs are big, shopping is big and Glenn Close is big - sounds like a good combination. We'll see if the celebrity blog strategy can be sustained over time, I'd guess not. Speaking of things that aren't sustainable - for this ecologically attuned site to promote the sketchy world of dog breeders and purebreds is a real shame. There's a huge number of mixed-breed dogs left abandoned and bound for extermination in pounds around the country. The Mystery Podcast ReappearsSpeaking of celebrities who struggle to produce regular content, Steve Gillmor is back. A long time tech journalist and an esoteric visionary, Gillmor gets the all-star crew of the old Gillmor Gang podcast back togetherfor a conversation about OpenSocial and so much more. Nick Carr, Michael Arrington, Jason Calacanis and some enterprise guys who are fun too. Many people have missed the Gang a lot and hope that it resumes. Where can you find the show? On Facebook, oddly enough. The beleaguered Podtech, Gillmor's employer for at least much of this year, isn't part of the picture. One way or the other, bring on the 90 minute, rambling, high-level conversation from a handful of elite industry thinkers. It's always been a great education and I'm not alone in wanting much more.
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/YouTube_Releases_Multi_file_Uploader_Raises_File_Limits_to_1_GB';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'compact';YouTube just announcedthe availability for Windows users ofa desktop uploader (install page here). Users will now be able to do bulk file uploads. The company also raised its file size limit from 100 MB to 1 GB. Length will remain at 10 minutes though, so that just means more high quality video will be available on the site.Google Video remains the option of choice for long form video uploaders but some YouTube users have long complained about the small file size requirements and resulting low quality. Vimeo, a tiny boutique competitor owned by IAC, opened to HD uploads at the end of last month.A Mac version of the uploader is in the works, the company said. Hopefully the time limit will be changed as well - the YouTube brand is so strong there's no reason not to encourage users to store their full length videos there. Video archiving is important work and YouTube should be up to the task.
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/software/MySpace_Hacks_on_the_Rise_Musicians_Hit';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'compact';Roger Thompson at Exploit Prevention Labs has discoveredmultiple hacked MySpace pages, including MySpace's #4 most popular major music artistAlicia Keys. Other bands hit include Greements of Fortune (a French funk band) and Dykeenies (a rock band from Glasgow).Roger noted that "attacks on MySpace seem to be on the rise." He says that the current hack, affecting Alicia Keys' MySpace page and others, is an image-background link which, when clicked, entices users to install a fake codec - which then infects the user's computer. He calls it a "FakeCodec trick" and here's how it works: if a user clicks on a MySpace page and slightly misses a control or link on that page, they have clicked the image-bg link and are then taken instead to the exploit site. Roger explains more in this video:To summarize, when a user visits the infected page, they're first hit by an exploit (which installs malware in the background if they're not fully patched against the latest security vulnerabilities), and next they're presented with a Fake Codec which tells them they need to install a codec to view a video. So even if they're patched, they can fall victim to the exploit.Roger said via an email that "it's MySpace that has been hacked, as opposed to the bad guysgetting the usernames and passwords of a few bands".The fact that MySpace is media-rich, with lots of sound and videos, means that the FakeCodec trick will be much more effective -- said Roger on his blog. The user, when clicking on the page, will expect to see a video or hear a song - but the hack will make them think they need to install something extra.Let us know in the comments if you've heard of other MySpace hacks recently - or Facebook hacks for that matter.
Blogcosmis a new company aiming to build a directory of the blogosphere. From the mundane to the esoteric, the company wants to provide users with a rich data set about any particular blog of interest or the vertical market it is in.I met founder Scott Lawton, an old time geek from Massachusetts, last night at the first annual Blog World Expoin Las Vegas. Blogcosm built a blog directory of all the speakers at Blog World Expoand the blogs they write for, as a case study. Lawton is a data quality algorithm expert who says his involvement in the web 2.0 scene predates Dave Winer's creation of Radio Weblogs. He started writing scripting utilities professionally for the Mac in 1993. He is nerdy and charming, if you like nerdy innovative types.The Blog World Expo in Vegas leaves no doubt that blogging is an emerging powerhouse of an industry. Lead by professional trade-show organizer Rick Calvert, the event is now expected to have 2000 attendees or more. Two hundred tickets were sold yesterday alone. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg keynoted this morning, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington will speak tomorrow. I spoke twice yesterday and the energy here is high.The DataIf you check out the Blogcosm page on the speakers at the expo you'll see that the company so far is pulling in data from Technorati, Alexa and a hanful of other sources. The self-funded project is muscling its way through indexing the blogosphere manually. It aims to go well beyond tech blogs and wants to pull data from a long list of available APIs - from Compete to Del.icio.us. The goal is to offer a useful entry about any blog you look up and information about categories of blogs that no one is capturing today. On the far end of the complexity spectrum, Lawton says he is experimenting with an algorithm that estimates the monetization of any given blog. Looking at the ad technology employed, probable CPM for a vertial and the estimated traffic of a blog, he says he hopes to be able to provide a rough estimate of how much money any blog is making automatically. Lawton told me that for now he can answer simple questions, but that those provide valuable information as well. There are no parenting blogs in the Technorati 100, he told me for example. That's interesting information. The ability to draw from a standardized taxonomy to discern who the leaders are in any blogging vertical is something that no one automates. As a data quality technical guy, Lawton says the software on the back end of his four person team should enable information parsing that Technorati, Techmeme and other sites just can't perform. That software, though, will ultimately be assisted with intelligent human intervention."Data quality issues in the Technorati 100 are appalling, even today," Lawton told me. "I think the world can afford to have someone look at a list like that before they publish it. Before there is a Blogcosm 100 it will face human judgment. Is a site a blog? Is it on the list for reasons that are correct or because of errors in the algorithm? What is it about? We think there are business models around answering those questions through a combination of automation and human editorial review."The site is ugly and bare bones today. The potential, though, is significant. As you can imagine, Lawton watches computer scientist Gabe River's blog tracking service Techmemeclosely as well. "Techmeme is just a pale shadow of what it could be," he told me. "For Gabe's sake I hope it's him that builds what Techmeme could be. If it's not him, it could be us."As a person who makes his living engaging with sites like Techmeme and Technorati - I am excited to see Blogcosm build its business around offering a high quality, structured dataset concerning the blogosphere.
Read/WriteWeb has a couple of jobs open currently:Silicon Valley-based Writer: we're looking for a writer based in San Francisco or Silicon Valley, to cover news and events happening in the Valley. We need someone who can attend all the Web tech events and maybe even go schmoozing at the parties on our behalf. We also need someone with an 'ear to the ground' in the Valley, who can pick up news stories for Read/WriteWeb. So if you're an enthusiastic webhead who would like press passes to all the cool tech events and news announcements, then contact the Read/WriteWeb editor. This is a part-time writing position, but could easily turn into a full-time one for the right person. To reiterate, you mustbe located in SF or Silicon Valley to apply for this.Webmaster: we're also looking for a person to do web site management and design tasks, on an ongoing basis (part-time). This person needs Moveable Type and Wordpress skills, and must be familiar with HTML, Javascript. If you're interested in this position, please contact the Read/WriteWeb editor.
At the Dow Jones and Nielsen Media and Money conference in New York today, Viacom and CBS chairman Sumner Redstone pulled out all the stops in defending the sanctity of copyright. "If content is king, copyright is its castle," he reportedly said. "Copyright compels creativity, it furnishes the incentive to innovate. If you limit the protection of copyright, you stifle the expression of self."The 84-year-old Redstone, whose company is in the midst of a lawsuitagainst Google's YouTube seeking $1 billion in damages for what it terms "massive intentional copyright infringement," was coy about the video sharing site, but did make some pointed remarks about what he thinks of YouTube's current business model. "Think about it: You cannot pay the rent posting videos on YouTube," he said. "And most aspiring novelists do not aspire to self-publish. You cannot make it as a musician, you can't make it as a filmmaker or a writer without ... effective and enforced copyright legislation."Redstone, though, does see a future for monetization of online content via advertisements. "Advertising will pay the way," he told the crowd.While I don't think I agree that looser copyright laws will lead to the demise of creativity, Redstone makes a fair point about the importance of control for media creators. Without control of distribution (and thus compensation), media producers simply can't afford to continue creating quality content. The content creator deserves to be compensated for the consumption of content no matter where it takes place -- especially if someone else is making money from it.On the other hand, content producers need to be more accommodating of changing consumer viewing habits. More and more people are getting video, audio, and textual content online, or doing things like timeshifting television programming with Tivo. Big media needs to get on board and realize that consumers want to be able to view their media whenever and wherever is most convenient for them. Giving consumers a choice of where and how to consume media would be beneficial to media producers in the long run.The problem for media companies, though, is that even with explosive growth of online advertising, it likely can't match the profits they get from other mediums. The Law &Orderfranchise, for example, reportedly rakes in over $1 billionin profits from rerun licensing rights, DVD sales, and overseas licensing. That's a lot of money that content producers might feel hesitant to potentially cannibalize by bringing content online.
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/tech_news/Where_the_Cool_Photos_Hang_Out';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'compact';Remember when Flickrused to be the elite hang out of the visual digerati? By initially embracing talented photographers, Flickr developed a reputation as the place to go to check out amazing amateur and professional photography on the web. But then Yahoo! came along and encouraged users of its Photos service to migrate to Flickr, opening the site up to anyone and their vacation pictures. Has Flickr become boring and mundane? Where should we turn to now to find all the cool photos?Flickr is still a great photo hosting platform used by a large number of amazing photographers, but cutting through the increased noise can be a chore. The six sites below will help you locate the more artistic photos out there on the web without having to wade through any photos of Aunt Millie at the beach. (NSFW warning: Some of the sites mentioned below do not censor out artistic nude photos -- as such, there may be unsafe for work content displayed on the main page.)vi.sualize.usis something like del.icio.us for photos. The site allows users to tag, categorize, and share photos from any photo hosting site on the web. The site pops up pictures in a Javascript light box at a reduced size and encourages visitors to view the photos at their original location and in their original context (i.e., if a photo was from a blog post or news article).Pixratis another social bookmarking site specifically design for photographs. The India-based sitelets users tag photos and organize them into albums. Users can also comment on photos or leave notes, as well as vote for photos using an up/down, Reddit-style voting system.FreshPhotographis a daily photo blog from the FreshArrivalfolks. While FreshArrival -- which is one of my favorite blogs -- is about delivering a link to one cool item or product each day, the similarly spirited FreshPhotograph posts "one amazingly cool photograph, every day." The photos come from the personal sites of professional or amateur photographers or photo sharing sites like Flickr and always link back to the artist's web site. The blog is a great way to locate unknown photographic luminaries, and their taste is excellent (in my opinion).FFFFound!is a photo bookmarking site that displays like a group photo blog. Using a bookmarklet, users add photos they like to the site as they browse the web. FFFFound! then attempts to ascertain your taste based on the kinds of things you've added to the collection, and recommends photos you might like. I generally visit FFFFound! a couple of times each week to scour for cool stuff to titillate my image receptors.Unlike the other sites in this round up, Deviant Art Photographyactually hosts photographs. DeviantArt has long been known as a place where elite digital artists like to hang out, and many of the photographers that maintain accounts there are oozing with talent. A trip through their massive photo section can quickly become addictive and I've often found myself "wasting" hours paging through the thousands of awesome pictures housed on the site.But what about the normal social bookmarking sites like Digg and del.icio.us? Well, most of them don't have dedicated picture sections, which makes finding cool pics a hit or miss activity that isn't the easiest undertaking. Enter PicURLs, a site that aggregates the "buzziest pics" from Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Flickr, Simpy, Furl, Boing Boing, and Wired. With all that picturey goodness, you'll be kept busy for hours.What are you favorite sites to find cool pictures? Leave your favorites in the comments below.
digg_url = 'http://www.digg.com/tech_news/FreshBooks_Goes_the_Extra_Mile';digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff';digg_skin = 'compact';FreshBooksis a billing web application that allows people to send, track and collect online payments. I don't use FreshBooks (I generally have no one to invoice) and I don't know much about the Ontario, Canada-based company, but judging from their web site, which features no less than 15 testimonials on the front page from "happy users," it seems apparent that customer service is important to them.Yesterday we were tipped off to an interesting blog postfrom a technology company in Fiji called Oceanic. A Freshbooks customer for nearly 2 years, Jonathan (whom we gather works at the company), lamented on the Oceanic blog about a day last April when the FreshBooks team was crooning over two new flavors of Triscuits: Rosemary and Olive Oil, and Cracked Pepper and Olive Oil. "I can’t believe how good these taste," wrote Mike McDerment, of FreshBooks.Bummed that the new snack cracker varieties were not available in his tiny island nation, Jonathan posted a comment to the FreshBooks blog threatening -- in jest -- to cancel his FreshBooks subscription if the company kept posting about mouth watering delicacies that were unavailable to him. Yesterday, many months after the initial post on the FreshBooks blog, Jonathon returned to his desk from a morning meeting to find a package air mailed from Canada. Inside the parcel: two boxes of Cracked Pepper and Olive Oil Triscuits (the tastier of the two flavors, according to FreshBooks)."I'm tempted to go on and on about the social implications of people just doing nice things for the sake of doing them," wrote Jonathon on his company's blog, "but I'll refrain from that and simply write: FreshBooks, you've got a customer for a life and yet one more person to sing your praises to the masses."FreshBooks obviously understands one very important part of building viral buzz for your company: keep your customers happy and they will evangelize your products. That doesn't mean giving in to every feature that anyone requests, and it doesn't even mean always agreeing with your customers -- the old aphorism that the customer is always right, isn't always, well, right! But doing the little things that allow you to form a connection with your customers on a personal level can score you a lot of capital with them. Sometimes, gaining a customer for life is as simple as sending a box of crackers overseas.
